The Man Who Lost His Body

n 1971 Ian Waterman was a butcher on Jersey. He was nineteen, newly qualified and working flat out to make a go of the business. Then suddenly he went down with what seemed to be gastric flu. But it wasn’t. He became wobbly and weak. Within days he had collapsed and was in hospital, unable to move or feel his body.

He has never regained that feeling, yet against all the odds, he has made an apparently miraculous recovery. HORIZON tells Ian’s extraordinary story. Ian had contracted a disease of the nervous system so rare that the doctors on Jersey were unable to diagnose it. It had destroyed all the sensory nerves responsible for touch, and for conveying information about muscle and joint position, senses so fundamental to our capacity to move in the world that they have been called a sixth sense.

Without this “proprioception” we can have no inner sense of posture or limb position and cannot initiate or control movement. Ian was told that he would spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. But Ian wasn’t paralyzed, and he was determined that he was going to lead as normal a life as he could.

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Very good doc. Fascinating subject excellently explained. Half way through it at the moment, to be honest, but very well done so far.

I wonder if it’s a bit like when you wake up with an arm asleep and you can’t move it…?

None

Second half as good as the first.
Should have said above I wonder if it’s like an arm asleep, but that’s your whole body.

Really gets you thinking….

Kudos to Ian for what becomes clear in this doc is an amazing achievement.

None

Very good doc. Fascinating subject excellently explained. Half way through it at the moment, to be honest, but very well done so far.

I wonder if it’s a bit like when you wake up with an arm asleep and you can’t move it…?

Pupp

Fascinating viewing especially at the end when they do the brain scans to prove / disprove what he says. The human body is capable of anything with the right amount of willpower behind it. Ian Waterman is a truly inspirational human being.